


The Nature of Light

by whitefang (radialarch)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Extended Metaphor, Gen, Physics, optics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 10:10:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/380239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/whitefang
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is the light and John is the conductor. Or so it’s been said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Nature of Light

**Author's Note:**

> For [aderyn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn), who sparked me with this fragment:
> 
>  _...once, at the dark zero of our time,_  
>  a blaze of revolutionary light  
> exploded out of nowhere, out of nothing,  
> because nothing needed the light,  
> as the brilliance of the light itself needs nothing.  
> —“Dependence Day”, John Daniel

Sherlock is the light and John is the conductor. Or so it’s been said.

The truth is more complex than that. (When is it not?)

Sherlock Holmes is brilliant like a man and brilliant like light, a sudden flare that no-one dares ignore. But what radiates from him is much too intense: unshielded, he burns. (And burns up.)

Light doesn’t need a conductor; light propagates through vacuum at nearly three hundred million metres per second. This is a constant of life, like body parts in the fridge and bullet holes in the wall.

As constant as John Watson.

Light is a wave. (Light is a particle.) Light refracts. (Light collides, like billiard balls.) Light is a contradiction that doesn’t bother to explain itself. (Because no explanation is necessary.)

Sherlock Holmes shifts, red and blue.

Light falls off like gravity, like electricity, inverse-squared; light emanates and decoheres; light interferes with itself (constructively) (destructively) and paints diffraction patterns in shadows. Light needs a focus.

John is a focus.

John reflects, like the smooth curve of a parabolic mirror. John redirects, like the twisting pathway of an optical fibre. ( _Total internal reflection._ ) John amplifies, like a seeded crystal. (And polarises. And modulates.)

Attenuation means loss; attenuation means dimming. John doesn’t intend to let that happen.

Sherlock may be luminous, but John makes him blaze.

**Author's Note:**

> Written because, well, light doesn't actually need a conductor. But it may need other things. 
> 
> Also, this is a natural consequence of studying for my physics midterm. Obviously.


End file.
